WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE 1999

MR T WILLS-SANDFORD, MR D BROWN, DR Q BALZANO, MR T HARRABIN and MR M PINCHES

  141. Do you agree that there is a need for this separate body urgently to get to grips with the rumours that there is a problem? Why can it not wait until the NRPB's own advisory group on non-ionising radiation considers it next year? What is the hurry?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) It was probably a reasonable reaction to press and expressed public concern. From a scientific point of view, I feel reasonably happy that the NRPB's normal processes would have come to the same conclusions.
  (Mr Brown) It is timely, is the word I would use. It is a timely response to increasing public interest in the science which underpins the fundamental safety of mobile phones. For that we do have Panorama and the other press to thank. It gives us an opportunity to acquaint consumers with the science in a far better way than we have done in the past. Therefore the expert group is right, it is timely, industry has a very great deal of experience and expertise to offer to that group and the more directly it is able to offer that to the group, the more effective that expertise will be. Therefore, if the expert group invites industry to become members directly, then my company—and I am sure I speak for the rest of the industry on this—will be delighted to answer the call.

  142. Do you think it is an opportunity to nip in the bud the stories so that they do not escalate into the kind of stories we have seen over GM foods for instance? Is that why you see it as timely?
  (Mr Brown) Yes, I absolutely do and that is why I think it is timely. The public will quite properly have a much higher degree of confidence in advice offered by an independent and independently funded and probably governmentally funded body like that than from other sources.

  143. Do you accept that the science is incomplete? We do not know the long-term effects. Or would you go further than that? At the beginning you were very clear that you thought there was no ...
  (Mr Brown) I would of course always fall back to the basic scientific fact that you cannot prove a negative and therefore it is always never going to be a perfect understanding, but beyond that point, no, any reasonable scientist would conclude that the science is essentially complete, that what is incomplete is our characterisation, our interpretation of that science for people who are not scientists and yet who are using devices which base their utility on that science.

  144. Do you have any comment on a figure which was quoted in the Panorama programme? The Panorama programme talked about a level of specific absorption rates and suggestion that the safe emission level is 10 specific absorption rates—10 SARs—and they gave a list of certain telephones which have different rates of whatever this is. Nokia were particularly high, Nokia 2110, Bosch World 718, Nokia 6110 were high whereas the Motorola ones, you will be pleased to hear, were significantly lower. No Vodafone devices were tested. Do you have any comment on that table in that Panorama programme and what they were trying to get at?
  (Mr Brown) SARs, specific absorption rates, as the Committee may already know, are the units by which the standards are set and with which we are all complying. I am an engineer not a scientist but I am given to understand that once you are below the standard set for SARs then all phones are equally safe; there is a scientific effect called the cliff effect there that once you are over it, once you are below that level, then you cannot use SARs to discriminate between phones. It is not meaningful, it is not understandable. That is the reason why we do not. That is the reason why we say the important thing is to be able to state categorically that the mobile phones meet the SAR standards set by the NRPB and not then go on to risk confusing the public about what relative SARs below the safe level really mean.

  145. We have already alluded to the fact that NRPB levels are five times as high as levels in some other countries. Do the models which have particularly high radiation levels but fall within the NRPB levels actually fall below the other recommended levels in other countries which are only one fifth of the NRPB's levels?
  (Dr Balzano) The answer is yes.

  146. Do you think it would be useful if there were a permanent expert body to develop what happens in mobile phones and to advise government?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) This was a Vodafone recommendation.

  147. Vodafone certainly recommended that a central body should be set up to "coordinate new research proposals, allocate and manage their funding, and communicate a balanced view". Perhaps when answering that, if it is Mr Harrabin who is going to answer, he could also answer a cynical question I should like to ask. Since there is such faith in the World Health Organisation for carrying out research and since the mobile phone industry wants to retain its independence, why does the mobile phone industry not hand over its research funds to the World Health Organisation and let them get on with it, thus research would be done by someone whom your organisations trusted and you would retain your independence?
  (Mr Harrabin) Already we are doing that effectively through the GSM association. This is the association of all GSM operators around the world and of course there are over 100 networks operating now with that standard around the world. Over the next four years the GSM association is going to be putting about £3 million into the World Health Organisation programme and the Vodafone AirTouch Group within that about £400,000.

  148. What about the central body, independent of industry but able to advise government and be a permanent body, inasmuch as anything is ever permanent?
  (Mr Harrabin) We have identified two needs which were reflected in our suggestion in our written evidence. Firstly, that we have noticed that it is quite difficult to decide who is going to decide which pieces of research should be funded and we feel if there were a central body that could fulfil that function it would be extremely useful. For reasons which I explained earlier we are very keen that should be independent. The second and very important factor as well where we see there is a need for something to be done is in terms of communicating a balanced view to the public as a whole. Again, it is very difficult for us in the industry to be seen to be totally unbiased and balanced and therefore if there were an independent organisation which could be putting out a balanced view, we would hope that would improve our customer confidence.

  149. At the present time, if there were a company making mobile phones who were producing a product that had ten times the emission of the worst product on the market at the current time, who would there be to suggest that product was taken off the market? I suspect no-one apart from the DTI if it decided to take an interest in it.
  (Mr Harrabin) All GSM handsets have to be type approved and it is only when they have been type approved that they get the BABT approval in order to be able to be sold in this country.

  150. I really asked that question because I want to know whether you think the body you are proposing from Vodafone should also be a regulatory body.
  (Mr Harrabin) We had not envisaged in the proposal that we have made that it would be a regulatory body.

  151. Why could not the National Radiological Protection Board satisfy the requirements you have outlined?
  (Mr Harrabin) I believe that we did suggest in our paper that it could be embodied within the NRPB but we did not wish to prescribe that.

  152. Do you consult consumer groups in your own research into mobile phone safety?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) We certainly have consulted consumers in terms of what their views are on mobile phones. Was your question whether we consult them on the research?

  153. Yes, into safety.
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) I personally am not aware of that but I do not know whether any of my colleagues are aware whether we have done that.
  (Dr Balzano) We listen to our customers. The customers call in. When there are issues of this type we get customers' calls and we do take very seriously the issue of listening to the customer. If you do not listen to the customer you go out of business. When we get comments we use them to affect the design of the product and to further research.

  154. You do not consult formal consumer organisations anyway.
  (Dr Balzano) It has not been necessary so far. Should it be necessary we would but up until now it has not been necessary. We have enough direct feedback from our customers and we consider that is sufficient.
  (Mr Harrabin) May I make a comment in terms of what we monitor because we monitor very carefully all feedback that we have from customers? We did a survey this week of about 5,000 e-mails which we have had into our operator centre this year and only five or six of them were pertaining to this particular issue. That is just one example of all the sorts of monitoring that we do.

  155. The Department of Health, when talking about an expert working group, said it would be drawn from "the relevant scientific fields, consumers, and the industry" but then they told us that nobody would be from the mobile phone industry. Do you think this would be a good idea? Do you think adequate expert advice could be obtained without bringing in somebody from your industry?
  (Mr Harrabin) Firstly, we do understand that the proposal was that the expert working group would certainly consult and involve industry, so we were very pleased to hear that. As far as whether we should actually be represented on the panel, our view is that this should be seen to be a balanced and unbiased panel and therefore it would depend upon the makeup of that panel as to whether it would be balanced and unbiased with or without us. Beyond that, we have not yet seen the terms of reference for this proposed panel and therefore it is difficult to comment further. Our prime objective would be that that panel should be balanced.

  156. I always remember when my wife was a local councillor and when anything came up on the local district council where anyone had any knowledge or connection with the subject they had to declare their interest and not speak. This meant the council discussed everything in a group of people totally ignorant of the matter and reached conclusions accordingly. I just wondered whether that would be the case here if you excluded everyone from the industry.
  (Mr Harrabin) It would certainly be so if everyone on the panel were ignorant.
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) It would certainly concern me if just consumers were represented without any significant representative from the industry who after all have some expertise to add.

  157. You referred already to the European Union Health Council's decision last week to propose lower levels for exposure to the extent of reducing the present levels to about one fifth. What proportion of the industry would already comply with those levels?
  (Dr Balzano) Are you talking about the phones or the base stations?

  158. I am talking about the phones.
  (Dr Balzano) As far as I can tell, the totality of the industry already complies with the limits for the simple reason that this is a global issue. A manufacturer will ship to a variety of countries, not only to Britain and that forces them to comply with the limits, for example of the US, with the limits of the European Union, so they are already there.

  159. Does that apply right across the industry to all suppliers of mobile phones?
  (Mr Pinches) Yes, I believe it does for suppliers of mobile phones. I wish to offer a comment about the situation regarding base stations which is also relevant where I think I indicated that we believe the majority of our sites would already comply. I can say that at least one of the competing UK operators already complies completely on all their existing sites. We cannot unfortunately say that today as I have indicated and we will check. I do not know the situation with the other two operators but I would imagine that in general pretty well all cell sites in the UK will comply today but testing and making sure may have to be done by some others.